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Jerry Seinfeld Busy as a Bee—with His New Film & Fatherhood
By Matt Stringer

“Did being a parent have anything to do with me wanting to make an animated film for children?” Jerry Seinfeld says. “No. Not that I don’t love kids. I have three kids and if you don’t know what having kids is like, it’s kinda like having a blender, but you don’t have the top for it. It works but there’s a huge cleanup afterwards every day.”

All jokes aside, his new animated feature film, Bee Movie, is anything but a B-movie, even if it is about a bee, Barry Bee Benson. Seinfeld is the voice for Barry which works out well since he wrote, created and produced the film.

Like everything Seinfeld, the idea for the movie was kind of a joke. Over dinner with Stephen Spielberg one night he mentioned that he was thinking of making a movie called Bee Movie about bees.

“It wasn’t an idea; it was kind of a joke really,” Seinfeld says, “a movie about bees called Bee Movie. He liked it. I certainly didn’t have an idea for the movie. In fact, if I had dinner with him one night later, I probably would’ve forgotten.”

But, he did have dinner with him on that night. Now more than three years have passed and on Nov. 2 what was originally a joke will be reality—a very funny reality.

The film follows the life of Barry Bee Benson after he graduates college and decides he wants to be one of the pollen jocks, the only bees who can leave the hive and venture out into the real world to pollinate flowers. But, Barry realizes he isn’t satisfied with his life as a bee, and that is what makes the movie so hilarious, which is typical Seinfeld humor.

“If you’re a bee and everything you eat is honey and everything he ever does is honey and you go ‘I don’t know if I’m into this honey thing’ that just strikes me as funny. That’s what I thought the movie should be about,” Seinfeld says.

What’s sort of ironic is that even in making the movie there was a kind of hive mentality. You could hardly call any part of making an animated film small but everyone worked together which isn’t the norm. Many times in making an animated film different actors will each voice their part without actually talking to the other actors. This was not the case in Bee Movie. And that made the movie very enjoyable to make because it was a team effort, and a fun time too, as co-director Simon J. Smith pointed out.

“Everyone wants to work with Jerry,” Smith says. “Seinfeld was with us the whole time throughout the entire process. After the first time when they sort of got the rhythm going those microphones were invisible and for us it was fantastic. From their perspective the guy’s a good writer, he’s a very good comedian, and I think that’s very attractive to them. He’s a super nice guy. He really is a generally decent bloke who just wants to have fun. We had such a good time.”

And maybe it was Seinfeld’s idea—okay it was his idea. “I insisted that every actor play with the actors they’re in the scene with, which is always me,” Seinfeld says, “so that was how we were able to do it. Every scene you see is actually acted out. No one recorded by themselves.”

At one point, when Seinfeld was writing the movie, he bumped into Ray Liotta in New York, and Liotta, like a lot of people, wanted to be a part of the movie. But he was a little surprised at his role—himself. “Little did he realize we were literally going to put him in the movie,” Smith says.

He only plays a small role in the movie as himself, the evil marketer of Ray Liotta Honey. Well, he doesn’t sell honey in real life, but maybe after the movie he will.

That’s the kind of Seinfeldesque humor infused throughout the film. Co-director Steven Hickner said some animators would question some of the logic in the movie, but humor doesn’t have to be logical, just funny. “How come Barry knows about Italian Vogue but he doesn’t know about a window or a light bulb?” Hickner says. “We have one rule and that is the convenience of knowledge, as long as it’s funny. If it’s funny, he knows it. If it’s funnier that he doesn’t know it, it works.”

But don’t be fooled. The movie pulls you in very different directions as Hickner points out. “Early on Barry sees the pollen jocks and I think everyone in the audience will say this is a movie about a bee who wants to be a pollen jock,” Hickner says. “Then a few minutes later he lands on the window sill and he meets Vanessa and they’ll say ‘oh this is a movie about a bee who befriends a woman.’ The movie keeps changing. It’s something different from what you expect.”

What you should expect to do is laugh. But don’t expect another movie or television show from Seinfeld anytime soon. “The truth is I’m old, I’m rich and I’m tired,” Seinfeld says. “I have not yet grown bored of sitting on my butt and watching my kids rip pages out of a magazine I haven’t even read yet, as we watch Elmo. I love Elmo. I find him funny, energetic and amusing and I think to myself, let him bust his butt. Why do I have to do that again? I think that is the best I could do [Seinfeld series] and I don’t want to do a second best.”

Plus, he is just enjoying being a father to his three kids, Sascha, 7, Julian Kal, 4, and Shepherd Kellen, 2, and husband to his wife Jessica, who recently wrote a cookbook, Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food.

“I love being a father,” says Seinfeld. “But I’m not an effective father. I love my kids but I just can not get them to do anything. I tell them what to do and they say…no, and so I have been reduced to small-time mob boss tactics: threats, fear…I use intimidation on them. I figure out what they like and then I threaten to hurt those things. Ya know I’ll say ‘I notice you’ve become quite fond of that little stuffed Curious George that sits in your room and it would certainly be a shame if something were to suddenly happen to it.’

“Sometimes they’ll make little Play-Doh animals and when they go to sleep I’ll break the heads off the animals and put them at the foot of their beds for them to discover in the morning. Nothing wrong with sending your kids a little Sicilian message,” Seinfeld says.

And apparently Seinfeld likes sending messages because this film does have one: no matter what you do do the best job you can because everybody’s part in the world matters. “It’s really important to do your job well even if it’s a small job,” Seinfeld says. “That’s kind of the code of bee-living. That’s the way they live. Each one of them has one little task. They each do it well so it adds up to being a big thing.”